I saw Foo Fighters with Queens of the Stone Age, PJ Harvey and the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Slane in 2003. I was 16 or 17 and it was the gig of my generation. I went to see Foo Fighters for the first time since a couple of years ago. Dave Grohl proudly looked to the crowd and shouted “And they say rock is dead” at a high point in the gig. I panned around and couldn’t spot a single person under 30.. It’s pretty gut-wrenching realising the music of your youth is now Dad-rock
But, Foo fighters have college age fans. Maybe it was just that night. Also, check out the reaction videos by the young - teens and twenties - discovering music from our generation. Most all of them are very excited and yet, sad they were not around during our time. I think once the younger ones hear it they like it. many are just not exposed to rock and the good stuff. I have wondered what would happen if the top 40 stations played rock from the late 60s thru the 90s for a 24 hour period to the teens today
As someone who was born in 1966 and started listening to rock as a young child in ‘72 this video made me want to cry. To see the gradual deterioration of everything I came to love growing up this is such a reality check for me. It’s heartbreaking! I guess I really wanted to believe that rock ‘n’ roll would never die.😢
I too was born in '66 and can remember the music of '72 thanks to my having a sister who was born in '61. So much of what I remember in those days is because she was entering and living her teens just a few years sooner than I would.
Genres don't die, they just fall out of popularity. You grew in an era when rock and roll dominated. Twenty years before you were born there was no rock and roll. Jazz had been the most popular genre of music for many decades. Now it's been hip hop dominating the charts for the last twenty years. In another decade or so something else will come along supersede hip hop. Circle of life.
@@mjwbulichIt’s already happening, hip-hop doesn’t have the same rebellious and anti-establishment feel it used to have, the thing that’s becoming popular at the moment is genres like shoegaze, indie, and alternative due to it having maximum exposure on TikTok, apparently, being a “alternative” is cool again, but like you said, it’ll probably last some 5 years and then bam, we’ll have other genres and subcultures dominating the youth.
You won't see it either way. Warner Brothers or someone of that ilk have probably already got it, and you'd have to prise it out of their cold, dead hands.
Of course, back in the day, album gatefolds and joints were closely related, and not just in the way we experienced the artwork along with the music contained within the vinyl. Weed back then contained lots of seeds, and the inside of the gatefold, propped up at an angle, was an efficient device for separating out those pesky seeds.
Well, I'm a big fan of the Floyd, Yes, Genesis, Bowie and Deep Purple ever since those days and never used drugs - but I can see that for many people it was a necessary connection.
Twenty years ago I decided to sell the old vinyl LPs that I hadn't listened to in decades so I took them down to the local used record store. When the clerk opened the gatefold of one of the albums out fell a pack of rolling papers and enough seeds to fill a sandwich bag.
If the Hall of Fame wants to put in different type of musical acts.they should change it to the Music Hall of Fame not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And there's many groups that have never been inducted. Bad Company Paul Rodgers have never been abducted isn't that a crime.
I discovered this channel yesterday. Today I have spent about 3 hours watching and listening to several programmes on it and can't have enough. Thank you, Andy! Big thumbs up from Samarkand!
In the UK we have The Arctic Monkeys They're no ACDC, but they're proof rock's not dead. Better, because of them, my teenage son's and their friends formed several bands and started playing Rock. I don't expect they're alone, so expect the fruits of that 'rock rebirth' in 10 years or so?
I enjoy watching your channel, but I wish you wouldn't assume we did something just because you did it. I never downloaded music just because you and other people did it. I'm 60 years old and learn new music information from your channel. Your interpretation of American music through the eyes of an Englishman is very interesting. Thank you, Andy.
There's a couple of differences between the music environment that we grew up in and the present environment that I think we need to explore more and that is that, back in the day, we were exposed mostly to the 15- 20 song in rotation on the radio at any given time, and the few albums that you could buy as a kid. Today kids and everyone, can access the whole of recorded music in the history of the world ,and from everywhere. I teach kids , and they're as likely to listen to something 50 years old ,as something made yesterday. Styles are all mixed up, and any sound can be made and find an audience. The problem is , almost nobody can make money off of recordings like they could decades ago.Love your video.
Time is indeed slipping away. I was watching a young woman with a bong and a peace sign on her T-shirt live-stream on YT, and when I made a Grateful Dead joke in the chatbox, she wasn't sure who I was talking about.
Re your end comments about only having time to listen to music in the car. I get it, but I actually make time to sit and listen to music, usually vinyl on my turntable. In the morning getting ready is a great time and then almost every evening (at least on weekdays) I sit and listen to at least a side of an album. I put the phone away, turn off the computer, lock out all distractions and sit and listen to music just like I did when I was a teenager in my room. This is time well spent my friends.
Great video....much food for thought..... I grew up listening to rock in the 60's and 70's.....After I discovered JazzRock it led me to become a jazz snob by the late 70’s. Apart from the odd band/artist I lost interest in rock, and felt it was tired... With the passing of the jazz giants, the tradition was passed onto the likes of Metheny, Scofield, Brecker etc.... As things stand for me now, both jazz and rock are museum pieces (as a living artform)...but we have the memories of live gigs we witnessed and a wealth of great recordings to listen to. I am still discovering new albums I missed first time around.....
I recorded albums in the early 90s, toured etc. This list resonates. And I would add: - The death of local scenes in the late 90s, mostly driven by radio stations getting bought by conglomerates - playlists lost the ability to support local bands, scenes, labels. - The UK music press turned rock v Britpop into a football match pool, dividing audiences, and basically ruining appreciation. My favorite acts from this time were roundly ignored by the music press, mainly Massive Attack et al, so were unscathed. - Grunge was almost the last gasp of bands rediscovering The Stooges and MC5. The problem with the grunge template is that the groove and boogie crushed a more interesting style of UK rock, such as Swervedriver. - the second wave of industry consolidation late-90s - death of the mid-sized indie label. It was a massacre, including big labels which had fostered some obscure talent on their riskier subsidiaries. All gone. - and the rest. LiveAid felt totally phony and hypocritical at the time. The best thing to come out of it was Chumbawumba's album "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records".
100% and let me add 3 things. Gender, visual nature of social media, and extreme class stratification. Rock was sociologically a way for often short, often not handsome, average, working class men to get laid and mate at least, and at most to get some upward class mobility - even if just by getting out of dead end towns. There are many industries that were like this, journalism famously was once a working class to middle class pipeline and then became a job just for ivy league elites. You know what I am going to say next, at some point being good looking mattered more in music, women had access to more elite men (whether by looks or by income) through social media, and at the time, class mobility was lessened across the board by globalization. Also, the internet /social media let lifestyle fully become image and consumption habits, separate from real experience or communities, so the cool , off beat lifestyles and personal ethics associated with musicians, especially rock musicians , could be had without rock music, scenes, touring etc and the price they could bring to one's career, health, etc.
Britpop was the nearest to rock music in the 90s. It was a fusion of the British Invasion genre with punk. It got a bit boring after a while as it was all you saw on TOTP circa 1995 with bandwagon jumpers copying Oasis and the Stone Roses. At the same time, there were trance and house music with the Chemical Brothers, Deep Forest, and 808 State.
Your first point: so true! In the USA president Clinton was to blaim for that by passing a law on radio stations I read a few months ago. I used to think he was the last sane president (besides Obama)... 🖖
Enjoying this rock series very much Andy. I think the phenomenon is wider, and you can miss the woods for the trees. Many genres of music seem stuck in a bit of a cul-de-sac, and even the ones that are still commercial like hip-hop feel like they're struggling for exciting new ideas. Outside of music, cinema lives completely on old recycled stories and characters. In visual art, when people are engaged at all, they're much more interested in the Renaissance or impressionism than anything made after Picasso and Matisse died. Or poetry - how many living poets could most people even name? Etc. etc.
It's been quite humbling for me and my GenX friends to realize that Hip Hop was no different than other genres with life spans. Our Golden Age era was the early 90s, and we spent the 2000s complaining and bemoaning its rapid decline like the grumpy old men who complained to us about the decline of Jazz and Funk. Humbling.
Good retrospective. I might add -- rock began as an inadvertent side effect of the fact that big bands were out, more clubs were having music (instead of just dance halls) and smaller bands needed to be fuller. In other words, louder. Enter the electric guitar. Once guitarists started pushing the volume they realized that the amps would distort, which sounded even better! After a short while, there were so many people playing guitar that Leo Fender figured that a fretted electric bass could be played by guitar players resulting in more customers. Of course, the electric bass was also louder and more "solid" than an upright, and before long a music that basically started as an imitation of jump blues became something more raucous. And powerful. And the kids loved it.
the crazy thing for me is that my musical life revolves around rock but I can't handle almost any rock before the 1970s, because the production style and thin tinny drum sounds just bother me so much.
"The Warning"; a true rock band [power trio] consisting of three 20-something Mexican sisters from Monterrey, MX, who sing in English [a couple of exceptions]. Their style is generally 70's-80's hard rock, that they write themselves. Its truly amazing seeing one of their live shows in the USA, lots of people in the crowd who clearly saw the GOATS of the past, and who had given up on ever hearing the music they love from a contemporary group. After 3 albums and an EP, of all original music, they simply have no bad songs. BTW, they had their "viral moment" as 10 year old kids, covering "Enter Sandman", but have DEFINITELY grown up into their talent.
I thought I understood something about this subject, but it seems I'd actually only just scratched the surface, and was blown away by your triumphantly thorough and precise post-mortem of Rock. I feel privileged to have heard it, yet find I'm a little depressed now, too. Ten deep stabs is too much for any art form to take!
Someone asked Roger Daltrey why old music was better and he said that when he was young, music was all that young people had, Now they have computers. I would also point out that a lot of great music was created by bands, but they went away because artists don't want to split the money. Finally, rock became about everything except rock. Look at who is in the rock hall of fame.
I'm from 96, still can't let go of rock music (alt-rock) and i'm still composing rock music. I made 22 tracks, mostly alternative rock. it's on spotify etc
Rock died because youth rebellion died. Kids today don't even want to learn how to drive. They have no interest in rebellion and freedom - quite the opposite. They want rigid uniformity. They want safe spaces. They don't want to rock. Heavy metal is the same - except it just became a bunch of weird occult themes and mindless screaming. It's horrible.
You're not even allowed to be rebellious anymore. Try it. You will get banned from venues, from social media, If you rebel hard enough, you will get your bank account revoked. You can't do it. I want to make music so bad, but I want it to mean something and that is genuinely illegal now
Not driving is probably one of the smartest things kids could do. And taking public transportation is an FU to fossil fuel industry. Acts of rebellion change with time. Ah yes, the good ol'days when kids died young in car crashes and cars killed the climate. This will get an "ok Boomer/Gen X'er" response.😂😂😂
I'm 54. Hardly play my large cd collection anymore. Prefer to play hi quality streaming (in the car especially and at work, home) but I still play my vinyl at home when time allows and is my preferred medium for new music purchases.
@@matturner6890 The artists arent losing out from what I can and can't afford when it comes to me buying physical copies. I would have bought what I would normally buy in terms of physical sales due to financial restraints. OK I pay a subscripton yearly that you could say could have gone to a few more physical purchases but Streaming can influence my limited purchasing power where I might buy something I would never have heard if it wasn't for the streaming platform. I will agree that what the artist gets per stream is woeful and something needs to happen there but the platforms also help make artists visible to potential purchasers who may also take in a live gig of that band, buy a t shirt etc? The industry did this to itself really during Napster and should have moved into the streaming market...but then the artist was generally ripped off by the industry anyway prior to illegal downloads. Artists do now have the freedom of starting up a cottage industry for themselves and keeping all their rights. Maybe use the streaming sites to showcase a couple of songs and then sell full material from their own websites or bandcamp..which is what they do. The whole industry has changed and artists just have to move with the times and come up with new ideas to make a living out of it. Of course the other problem is getting heard in a sea of musicians who can release very professional recordings froma home studio set up. Will I stop using streaming sites because you say I should? Not likely, the geni is out of the bottle I'm afraid.
As one of those old guys you mentioned, around the mid-80s I realized that rock appeared to be dead. All of the other genres appeared to have nudged it off to the side as younger people seemed to be content with what I called "crap". Fast forward to today and I'm finally listening for the first time to some of the bands who were very popular in the 80s/90s/00s. I'm finding that some of them had some worthwhile songs, so shame on me for putting a blanket over all of them and walking away. Suffice it to say that I never downloaded anything that I didn't pay for. What really brought me back was, as crazy as it sounds--covid. Being stuck at home I discovered UA-cam. I discovered people there doing reactions to music they'd never heard of by taking requests. I discovered bands like The Warning, who got discovered ten years ago doing a cover of Metallica's Enter Sandman as kids in their basement. They're getting ready to release their fourth album and the youngest just turned 19. It's good quality hard rock with influences from the same time period that I poo-pooed. So, I admit that I was wrong, and that the nails may be resting on the lid of rock's coffin, but they have yet to be driven in.
Wayne Kramer last week. one guy who wouldn't anytime soon, turn his back on rock bands. and Andy is here to remind me that it's not so much the music of rock only, it's the people who are still serious about making music in a rock band, that are dying. long live Wayne Kramer. (in what he created).
Wayne and the MC5 were the living personification of rock and roll for me. Forever grateful for all the artists that did it right inspite of the mainstream public and industry trying to suppress it
I am 74 years old, listened to prog and fusion all my adult life. When my 18 year ol grandson with girlfriend here listening to music by Pink Floyd, tell me have never heard of them, my inner being groans in shock and despair.😢
Did you ask them to hang around awhile and just listen to Dark Side of the Moon? If they heard some they may have gotten curious and even liked it. My 14 year old granddaughter heard Bohemian Rhapsody a little over a year ago and fell in love. She spend the rest of the day listening to it over and over until she could sing along. and is now a fan of Queen
I'm sure some of the younger generation are interested. But in truth I don't see it myself. Trying to entice my music tastes to most grown ups is usually met with derision.@@DianeLake-sw3ym
Led Zeppelin was rarely played on USA radio when they were around as a band. And when they finally started to play LZ all they played was Stairway To Heaven.
IDK, when I started listening to rock music in California in the late 1970s they were already rock God status. Not sure how it was in the early 70s. Maybe like you said, not much attention.
Laura Near-o. I learn alot from you. Love your channel. I saw Led Zeppelin in Summer 1969 at a multi-band concert. They were the last band and, after four songs, the promoter shut down the concert to avoid Union overtime pay. The audience grumbled but no riot. (The other bands were Jethro Tull, Johnny Winter and Buddy Guy)
"American Idol" aka Simon Cowell and all his associated spin-offs completely shifted the focus back to only vocals. I foresaw that coming during Season 1 when Kelly Clarkson was battling Justin Guarini for supremacy.
Hello Andy. My first comment on your channel that I recently discovered. I mainly agree with you in this video. I'm 55 and explored several genres of music until the first half of the 90's time when I realized that rock music was nearly dead. Now I only listen to music from the 70's, the genres you talk about here, prog, jazz, fusion even if my first loves of music during my teens are in the eighties. A special bravo for your drumming in IQ ! (sorry for my french english)
Beato also recently called Billie Eilish the heir to the legacy of Kurt Cobain. His videos are often interesting, but he panders a lot, and he isn’t always honest.
Some of it died for me when a couple of decades back I saw an interview with four quite young boys who were proudly talking about how they loved rock and had started a rock band. After a while they got up to perform, and all four of them grabbed a microphone and started singing to a backing track. Oh, a boyband, right on.
I knew that rock was in trouble when I listen to Larger than Life by The Backstreet Boys and then It's My Life by Bon Jovi back to back. I kept trying to tell myself it was Studio interference
Great video Andy. One thing you didn’t discuss was generational change. The drift in preference in music. I was born in 1954, I recall during the 60s and 70s having no interest in the music my parents and grandparents were interested in. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I really loved the music of Al Jolson, George Cohan, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald. But it was always old music, music of a bygone era. But consider 50 years back from 1966 (when I was 12) took me back to 1916. 50 years back from now takes me back to 1974, so larger gap from now to 1966 than from 1966 to 1916. Another point, maybe this only relates to Australia, during the 1980s all these environmental laws. Health and Safety laws that reduced the number of people you could cram into a pub for a gig and the need to create fire exits that are expensive to retro fit. Noise abatement laws that allowed those who lived near pubs to close down the venues due to noise and behaviour of patrons during and after gigs. Introduction of random breath tests for alcohol for car drivers so the consumption of alcohol dropped at pub gigs. And finally, the introduction of legislation that gave poker machines ( slot machines) licences to pubs. All that killed the Australian Pub rock scene here in Australia. Finally, there are still great bands performing interesting music in the Rock genre but they fail to get airplay except on niche stations. Here in Australia, some community radio stations and the ABC ‘youth stations’ Double J, Triple J and Unearthed.
Great list Andy but the corpse was rotting well before this. The first nail was the death of '60s optimism and the hippy dream after Altamont; the Manson murders; Vietnam; political assassinations; Nixon; the death of Jimi, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin etc. The Woodstock festival lost a ton of money but the movie made the organisers millionaires. The corporations soon realised the potential and made their move. Another nail was the glam rock fashion of the early '70s. This was followed by AOR and 'yacht rock' a few years later. Look at any edition of TOTP from 1976 and you'll see what I mean. There were also two albums that killed rock through mega commercial sales: Hotel California, and Rumours. There was also a movie called Star Wars that changed youth culture. So it was over before its idiot bastard son, punk came along and danced all over its grave. RIP.
I always defend Fleetwood Mac when they are lumped in with the Eagles. Their music was not limp. There so much more musicianship going on. I even liked Stevie Nicks in that context.
@@Birdlives247 True - they were far from limp when they were Peter Green's band. :) But they became the very definition of limp in respect to music without him. Smoothed and sanitised to ensure they didn't excite the masses to any action other than opening their wallets. Wonderful performers , great writing and very clever songs. There is a place for that obviously but it's classic "dad" rock. (And that is not rock!)
It is true that Death is a theme that kind of runs through this channel, and it is good to acknowledge Him. I can and do listen to contemporary, shadowless k-pop girl groups for days on end, hoping He'll go away, but so far it hasn't worked. Nowhere to run.
Yes I agree with your summary of what killed Rock, one other factor was Punk Rock and the intense dislike of old aging hippies playing in huge arenas, this was the beginning of the end, oddly enough one band produced what many consider to be the best Punk Rock song without all the hype of the Pistols and that was 'New Rose' by the Damned, this short lived band, considered to be Punk were technically reflective of Rock, they could actually play, without resorting to three chords The success of Punk came from a new generation with different values who invented a new fashion and outlook on life alien to Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes and a generation of others, that was the' first nail in the coffin' for Rock
Rock and Roll is not at all dead, it just packed up and moved to Japan where incredibly gifted musicians there have picked up the mantle of Rock in all its glory. They produce new amazing songs with the heart and soul of Rock's true forebearers. There are many great bands in Japan, but my favorite is the powerful five member, all female group called Band-maid. Check out their instrumental MV "From Now On" to see their impressive musical chops or see their incredible official live video "Domination" to see how a real Rock band can still blow away an audience. There are many others, of course, but if you want genuine hard Rock, one has to look outside of the dull American soundscape to the great artists playing abroad. Peace.
I wish I could give you more than one thumbs up. Rock is very much alive and well. It just moved to Japan, is female and sometimes appears in maid outfits!
Band-Maid is one the best guitar-based bands you can find. They strike that perfect balance between chaos and perfection; the sweet spot of artistic creation as Andy has described. They draw from most all rock genres, are excellent musicians, and great performers. The songwriting is genius. Plus they have a positive vibe and bring lots of happiness. They are a band that can bring us all together, if anyone can. They make me feel like I am in the 1970's again with that explosive musical creativity.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is killing Rock and Roll. It is smothering and crushing the heart and soul of rock and roll. The RRHOF celebrates the very things rock and roll rebels against.
Right. As soon as the vampires notice the numbers ticking up on a band they do derivatives or straight copies which tends to overshadow the original form. This isn't exactly news.
If you watched MTV in 1989 and then tuned again in 1994, this would be overwhelmingly obvious.... They switched from third rate 80's style hard rock bands (who admittedly had some talent) to third rate 90's style hard rock bands (where riffs and melodies were heavily dumbed down and solos were almost non existent).
Rock might be long dead, but the segment of the music gear industry marketing guitars and gadgets to rock guitarists sure is alive and kicking. Never has there been so many choices in guitar gear, at all price points, and targeted at all eras and styles of rock music. I guess I find this sort of ironic.
Saw the Who in about 1979 in London ( "Who are you" tour I think). Kenny Jones on drums replacing the recently deceased Keith Moon (aged 32). Said to my fellow 16 year old mate at the end of a pretty dull gig "wish we'd seen them when they were young and good".
I was lucky enough to have seen The WHO when KEITH MOON was still alive at the Seattle Center Coliseum.. I was a teenager… they kicked ass.. as powerful as the LIVE AT LEEDS album… Best live recording of any band ever made in my opinion… 😊
The MTV phenomenon is very pertinent indeed. In the mid-70's in Australia, the ABC (public TV and radio network) introduced an hour long TV Pop/Rock program called 'Countdown'. It replaced a 15 minute daily Rock program called 'GTK'. Whereas GTK was counter-cultural, Countdown was very mainstream. I first saw Gabriel-era Genesis on GTK as a child. Countdown lasted from late 1974 to 1987. It was like MTV in that it broadcast very commercial music and rarely gave anything radical a look in. It also portrayed music in a cutesy, formulaic fashion. As a kid, I hated how "square" this show was but had no televisual alternative.
MTV in Europe at least allowed for a great deal of unusual and half experimental/niche music that was way outside of the FM Radio charts format. I remember watching a gig with Radiohead live on MTV around 1992, and videos with West German and French underground bands in the mid-eighties.
Rock was always popular because it captured the youth culture. A bunch of boomer men touting the Warning isnt going to do much in making them the biggest band in the world.
@@mykemech Im Gen Z too and by boomers I mean 40s and up. Anyone whos old gets called a boomer. If you wanna argue 40s is young then we'll be here all day.
I abandoned contenporary music in the 80's, now in my 60's, I swerved back into it, now lovin it again.. Yes, screamin' and growling can be a racket on first listen, but give it a chance to get under yr skin. Some fine introspective lyrics/songwriting/stage presence. When its good its F amazing. The energy is there... JINJER, Slaughter to prevail, Spiritbox. Also Rammstein, S.O.A.D, Tool etc etc, just some that passed me by while my old head was in the sand...Brummie far away Btw..
Author/rock critic Steven Hyden covered this topic extensively in his book "Twilight of the Gods", which I recommend. But the bottom line is this: public taste is what it is and you can't expect the general public to adore the classic rock aesthetic forever.
I was growing up in Slovakia in the 90s and I remember that CDs cost the equivalent of 25-30 dollars a piece which none of us could remotely afford so of course we were all pirating like crazy. The whole music scene was this crazy bootleg/smuggling operation where anyone with a CD burner was a king. I remember at one point the Pearl Jam Unplugged record turned up in my town but it only had the first four songs for some reason... It took me and my friends literally years to get the full thing. Oh, the good old times.
I love them all but I think my least favorite is Unrest. I know everyone gets excited about side two of that album, but I lived with free jazz and free improv for about five years before that album appeared, so it didn't do that much for me. But HC was impressive. I preferred John Greaves to Georgie Born on bass, just because I like busy bass players, but Georgie was very good.
By the late 70s I had not listened to commercial radio for years. I found myself in a band and the musicians began picking songs I never heard of….in a few short months, I found myself in a disco band. Oh my, what I endured…..ugly matching clothes, haircuts, dance lessons!!! I remember walking into a San Francisco club and saw two people with only keyboards. A few years later, fed up with ‘musicians’ I entered into the world of MIDI. Now I had total control of what I played, when I played and making more money than a whole band. I’ve been asked to join many bands…….still working solo!
10 years back my young workmates did not know the Rolling Stones. I heard a Chinese born and raised girl humming Red River Valley, but her dad was a pianist. She knew every note of the tune.
@@hansolo9585 Well, if Richie is thinking like Keith Richards, here's the issue: "“Rap: so many words, so little said. What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many TONE-DEAF people out there,” he said. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it, and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.” I would add, all they need is one repeating note (usually sampled from real musicians) and somebody yelling over it, and they're happy. If you ask musicians, those who actually compose and arrange music, writing the melodies is actually the "heavy lifting" part of the creative process, and most of the lyrics come later. With hip-hop, they often just take (sample) someone else's melody and superimpose lyrics, which tend to be low brow, simplistic, braggadocious, juvenile, profane, misogynistic, and completely lacking a sense of curiosity or originality. Someone once played a rap song for me in Serbo-Croatian, and I just burst out laughing. Despite being unable to understand a single word, it still managed to sound like a million other hip-hop tunes, with the same sequence and cadence over and over.
Totally agree. In the 70s I used to find reggae boring because I thought it was too basic and it all sounded the same. But when hip hop came along it suddenly made Bob Marley sound like Beethoven! Truly a great tragedy for Black music and Black culture if hip hop is now the only future "artform" from a people who gave the world Gospel, Blues, and Jazz. Today, sadly it seems musical talent is no longer required. (Quite apart from glorifying gangsta lifestyle , guns and misogyny).
I used to think that Napster Killed Rock, but it only EXCELERATED its demise. I also think that the PROLIFERATION of TECHNICAL GUITAR SOLOS & GUITAR PLAYING took rock n roll into the "YAWN ERA". And "been there done that," where by the year 2000 every conceivable chord progression had been played forward & backward. And YES....DEATH!!!!!
Napster killed it because the major labels didnt want to sign and invest lots of money into lots of rock bands anymore after people were getting the music the free. How many huge hard rock and metal bands has their been post Napster ? Not a lot. The major labels still run the music industry.
my man i feel incredibly validated in this moment. i'm 55 and a curmudgeon i'll be the first to admit it. i've been saying since at least the early 90's that music videos were the beginning of the end fer rock and all its various sub genres. why? because in the 50's, 60's and 70's yer music TRULY HAD TO STAND ON ITS OWN. you could make a clip like "strawberry fields forever" or whatnot (such as the artiste playing the song live or pretending to play the song live) and it mite be on tv once and nobody would see it again until years later in reruns. it was not on several times a week fer weeks. therefore, all the emotion and dopamine had to be created by the music alone. that's why even the crassly mersh stuff back then was great (bands like LOOKING GLASS in the states or MUD in the u.k.). once videos become a thang and then mandatory yer music could be completely mediocre or even downright shit but you can make a cool mini movie to go with it and that will sell yer units for you. you just handed mediocre artists the greatest crutch in history! not only that but suddenly the movie/television industry and the music industry are no longer entirely separate entities as they once were and so now they're joined at the hip and pretty soon modeling and all sorts of other phony, shallow garbage industries are invited to the party and a suffering art form is only further diluted away from its purest essence. in an era when visual is more important than audio somebody like JIM CROCE couldn't get arrested these days. i know i'm generalizing and oversimplifying like a motherfucker here but in the end me thinks i'm correct. btw, you talk like the guys in BLACK SABBATH.
The death of rock is built on the incessant doodling of rock guitarists, and poor songwriting. Van Halen was a great guitarist, but an average writing. He is where it all went wrong. Hendrix allied his virtuosity to the song. He didn't stop halfway thru a song, play a solo, and then go back to the crud! It was all one. We are currently surrounded by all these technically great guitarists, but the songs are poor, poor, poor.
Damiano David rock frontman from Måneskin examines that rock is not dead it is recycled. They play with rock attitude and pop creativity. They are a wonderfully talented very young group from Italy. Anyone who has seen them live can’t dispute that they are rock. They have talent, audacity, energy, fashion, looks and they keep experimenting.
I admire your „ professorship“( no irony intended).You might not want to disclose it, but do you lecture freely without reading? Great skill you have. As for digital drumming: I did this some time ago and was amazed at the inaccuracies that could be heard and the printed score showed. It went as far as 100 th of a second. Couldn’t ´ t believe it.
Still with the needless tube amp worship 🤮 heavy, useless, fickle things unless you're playing Wembley Stadium. Rock will not live if no one innovates and embraces new tech.
I’ve once again found your perspective very interesting. All fantastic points of what is happening beneath the surface. I do think much of Rock, Classic rock and especially Progressive Rock will survive for centuries. Yes, I said centuries. We’re already 50 years or mor out from some historic music and I believe in 50 years it’ll still be listened to. Much like Mozart, Bach, Beethoven etc.
If coffin of rock is more rock than rock coffin, does that mean that lobster of rock is more rock than rock lobster? Ok, yes, I’m a troll. I’ll see myself out.
The Rock and Roll HOF is a misnomer. I dislike the fact that it is an umbrella for every style of music. It should be called THE MUSIC HALL OF FAME with specific honors for each genre and subgenre. Too many non-rock music acts are getting recognized as great rock and rollers whilst great rock bands are over looked and left out.
Big-band and stuff probably dead but trawled UA-cam and found Django and Stephane Grappelli ( with a brilliant Sacha Distell on guitar!), who seem as fresh, timeless and deathless as ever. Film will probably save them and many another from total oblivion. Genius never fails to impress whatever generation you happen to belong. I still love Chaplin, Keaton and co for instance.
...apart from Drum'n'Bass being over thirty years old, yeh...just imagine people at an acid house party asking for Rock around the Clock by Bill Haley And the Comets because that is the relitive timescale, a lot of music gets lost..a lot of bands have never had a big media profile because they never "played the game" in the first place, like festival headliners Ozric Tentacles and Here N Now, Porcupine Tree never 'made it' until they stopped touring. There bands that sell out gigs now that have never released records, some have never had any songs or setlists and inprovise at every gig like The Bays. My personal favorites have been Sicknote, Culture Shock and NFA... there is a new underground...
Great video as usual Andy! 42:11 My first copy of Van Halen Fair Warning was a cassette I recorded off of the radio which I played a thousand times -- the station would play full albums on Sunday nights -- I went to the record store and looked at the vinyl copy to see what the song titles were but they were in a different order from the real track listing and I was quite confused at first
I saw Foo Fighters with Queens of the Stone Age, PJ Harvey and the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Slane in 2003. I was 16 or 17 and it was the gig of my generation.
I went to see Foo Fighters for the first time since a couple of years ago. Dave Grohl proudly looked to the crowd and shouted “And they say rock is dead” at a high point in the gig. I panned around and couldn’t spot a single person under 30.. It’s pretty gut-wrenching realising the music of your youth is now Dad-rock
Grandad rock
I went to see Dream Theater and my ex gf 22 year old daughter went wirh me so there are some young people into rock and prog and metal
It’s just a matter of making Dad rock cool. Simple right? 🤣
@@dbmorton1114 yeah piece of cake, maybe granddad rock will work better.
But, Foo fighters have college age fans. Maybe it was just that night.
Also, check out the reaction videos by the young - teens and twenties - discovering music from our generation. Most all of them are very excited and yet, sad they were not around during our time. I think once the younger ones hear it they like it. many are just not exposed to rock and the good stuff. I have wondered what would happen if the top 40 stations played rock from the late 60s thru the 90s for a 24 hour period to the teens today
As someone who was born in 1966 and started listening to rock as a young child in ‘72 this video made me want to cry. To see the gradual deterioration of everything I came to love growing up this is such a reality check for me. It’s heartbreaking! I guess I really wanted to believe that rock ‘n’ roll would never die.😢
I too was born in '66 and can remember the music of '72 thanks to my having a sister who was born in '61. So much of what I remember in those days is because she was entering and living her teens just a few years sooner than I would.
It won't die but it will have to fight it out with other genres. Plenty of younger people find older songs that they enjoy.
“Alles was ist, dass endet.” (R. Wagner)
Genres don't die, they just fall out of popularity. You grew in an era when rock and roll dominated. Twenty years before you were born there was no rock and roll. Jazz had been the most popular genre of music for many decades. Now it's been hip hop dominating the charts for the last twenty years. In another decade or so something else will come along supersede hip hop. Circle of life.
@@mjwbulichIt’s already happening, hip-hop doesn’t have the same rebellious and anti-establishment feel it used to have, the thing that’s becoming popular at the moment is genres like shoegaze, indie, and alternative due to it having maximum exposure on TikTok, apparently, being a “alternative” is cool again, but like you said, it’ll probably last some 5 years and then bam, we’ll have other genres and subcultures dominating the youth.
Rock and roll better not be dead, it still owes me money.
Now you'll have to charge it from Migos....oh wait...
Tylor Swift took your money
You won't see it either way. Warner Brothers or someone of that ilk have probably already got it, and you'd have to prise it out of their cold, dead hands.
@@HakanTunaMuzik that’s ok we used to date
it's not dead, it just smells funny!
Of course, back in the day, album gatefolds and joints were closely related, and not just in the way we experienced the artwork along with the music contained within the vinyl. Weed back then contained lots of seeds, and the inside of the gatefold, propped up at an angle, was an efficient device for separating out those pesky seeds.
Hence the rise of the double album! 😂
And usually there was a preferred "rolling album" ...
Well, I'm a big fan of the Floyd, Yes, Genesis, Bowie and Deep Purple ever since those days and never used drugs - but I can see that for many people it was a necessary connection.
Twenty years ago I decided to sell the old vinyl LPs that I hadn't listened to in decades so I took them down to the local used record store. When the clerk opened the gatefold of one of the albums out fell a pack of rolling papers and enough seeds to fill a sandwich bag.
Oh man I forgot all about that, that takes me back.
As a 27 year old progressive musician who loves Rock and jazz This video is special. Please keep talking about this topic.
11. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame starts accepting anybody and everybody; pop stars, country artists, rappers etc.
I'm going to do a video on the rock n roll hall of fame
Eminem is in there...😳
RRHOF has always been a joke, why pay attention to it?
Heavy Metal artists are still unwelcome. Frankly, all for the better.
If the Hall of Fame wants to put in different type of musical acts.they should change it to the Music Hall of Fame not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And there's many groups that have never been inducted. Bad Company Paul Rodgers have never been abducted isn't that a crime.
I discovered this channel yesterday. Today I have spent about 3 hours watching and listening to several programmes on it and can't have enough. Thank you, Andy! Big thumbs up from Samarkand!
It’s not dead but it’s been in a coma since 1996.
Limp Bizkit's debut album paralyzed it from the neck down.
In the UK we have The Arctic Monkeys
They're no ACDC, but they're proof rock's not dead.
Better, because of them, my teenage son's and their friends formed several bands and started playing Rock.
I don't expect they're alone, so expect the fruits of that 'rock rebirth' in 10 years or so?
I enjoy watching your channel, but I wish you wouldn't assume we did something just because you did it. I never downloaded music just because you and other people did it. I'm 60 years old and learn new music information from your channel. Your interpretation of American music through the eyes of an Englishman is very interesting. Thank you, Andy.
There's a couple of differences between the music environment that we grew up in and the present environment that I think we need to explore more and that is that, back in the day, we were exposed mostly to the 15- 20 song in rotation on the radio at any given time, and the few albums that you could buy as a kid. Today kids and everyone, can access the whole of recorded music in the history of the world ,and from everywhere. I teach kids , and they're as likely to listen to something 50 years old ,as something made yesterday. Styles are all mixed up, and any sound can be made and find an audience. The problem is , almost nobody can make money off of recordings like they could decades ago.Love your video.
Time is indeed slipping away. I was watching a young woman with a bong and a peace sign on her T-shirt live-stream on YT, and when I made a Grateful Dead joke in the chatbox, she wasn't sure who I was talking about.
Youre right andy: that's what life is for all of us: " its the final countdown"
Dah di di dah dah dah dah etc....
Re your end comments about only having time to listen to music in the car. I get it, but I actually make time to sit and listen to music, usually vinyl on my turntable. In the morning getting ready is a great time and then almost every evening (at least on weekdays) I sit and listen to at least a side of an album. I put the phone away, turn off the computer, lock out all distractions and sit and listen to music just like I did when I was a teenager in my room. This is time well spent my friends.
Great video....much food for thought.....
I grew up listening to rock in the 60's and 70's.....After I discovered JazzRock it led me to become a jazz snob by the late 70’s. Apart from the odd band/artist I lost interest in rock, and felt it was tired...
With the passing of the jazz giants, the tradition was passed onto the likes of Metheny, Scofield, Brecker etc....
As things stand for me now, both jazz and rock are museum pieces (as a living artform)...but we have the memories of live gigs we witnessed and a wealth of great recordings to listen to. I am still discovering new albums I missed first time around.....
"...it led me to become a jazz snob.." hahaha love it! I admire your honesty. (I'm also a jazz snob btw).
A video that's over an hour long and leaves me looking forward to future videos promising to go into more detail. Well done.
Awesome, thank you!
I recorded albums in the early 90s, toured etc. This list resonates. And I would add:
- The death of local scenes in the late 90s, mostly driven by radio stations getting bought by conglomerates - playlists lost the ability to support local bands, scenes, labels.
- The UK music press turned rock v Britpop into a football match pool, dividing audiences, and basically ruining appreciation. My favorite acts from this time were roundly ignored by the music press, mainly Massive Attack et al, so were unscathed.
- Grunge was almost the last gasp of bands rediscovering The Stooges and MC5. The problem with the grunge template is that the groove and boogie crushed a more interesting style of UK rock, such as Swervedriver.
- the second wave of industry consolidation late-90s - death of the mid-sized indie label. It was a massacre, including big labels which had fostered some obscure talent on their riskier subsidiaries. All gone.
- and the rest. LiveAid felt totally phony and hypocritical at the time. The best thing to come out of it was Chumbawumba's album "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records".
100% and let me add 3 things. Gender, visual nature of social media, and extreme class stratification. Rock was sociologically a way for often short, often not handsome, average, working class men to get laid and mate at least, and at most to get some upward class mobility - even if just by getting out of dead end towns. There are many industries that were like this, journalism famously was once a working class to middle class pipeline and then became a job just for ivy league elites. You know what I am going to say next, at some point being good looking mattered more in music, women had access to more elite men (whether by looks or by income) through social media, and at the time, class mobility was lessened across the board by globalization. Also, the internet /social media let lifestyle fully become image and consumption habits, separate from real experience or communities, so the cool , off beat lifestyles and personal ethics associated with musicians, especially rock musicians , could be had without rock music, scenes, touring etc and the price they could bring to one's career, health, etc.
Britpop was the nearest to rock music in the 90s. It was a fusion of the British Invasion genre with punk. It got a bit boring after a while as it was all you saw on TOTP circa 1995 with bandwagon jumpers copying Oasis and the Stone Roses. At the same time, there were trance and house music with the Chemical Brothers, Deep Forest, and 808 State.
Totally agree about Live Aid, an utter fraud. Having done some time in Africa it was even worse at that end.
Your first point: so true! In the USA president Clinton was to blaim for that by passing a law on radio stations I read a few months ago. I used to think he was the last sane president (besides Obama)...
🖖
@@emilianosintarias7337Upward mobility? That was kind of rare actually. Where does gender figure into your equation?
Enjoying this rock series very much Andy. I think the phenomenon is wider, and you can miss the woods for the trees. Many genres of music seem stuck in a bit of a cul-de-sac, and even the ones that are still commercial like hip-hop feel like they're struggling for exciting new ideas. Outside of music, cinema lives completely on old recycled stories and characters. In visual art, when people are engaged at all, they're much more interested in the Renaissance or impressionism than anything made after Picasso and Matisse died. Or poetry - how many living poets could most people even name? Etc. etc.
It's been quite humbling for me and my GenX friends to realize that Hip Hop was no different than other genres with life spans. Our Golden Age era was the early 90s, and we spent the 2000s complaining and bemoaning its rapid decline like the grumpy old men who complained to us about the decline of Jazz and Funk. Humbling.
Our beloved anthems are now being fed back to us in insidious, banal muzak. Bloody 'ell, "Day in the Life," as light elevator music.
The height of an insult to our intelligence!
You know you're getting old when the Ramones are used to advertise a white goods company and the Jam are the soundtrack to a supermarket commercial.
Good retrospective. I might add -- rock began as an inadvertent side effect of the fact that big bands were out, more clubs were having music (instead of just dance halls) and smaller bands needed to be fuller. In other words, louder. Enter the electric guitar. Once guitarists started pushing the volume they realized that the amps would distort, which sounded even better! After a short while, there were so many people playing guitar that Leo Fender figured that a fretted electric bass could be played by guitar players resulting in more customers. Of course, the electric bass was also louder and more "solid" than an upright, and before long a music that basically started as an imitation of jump blues became something more raucous. And powerful. And the kids loved it.
Great synopsis. Rockabilly came out of the post- World War Two honky tonks in a similar fashion, I guess.
But it a boring cleeshay(yes I know I can't spell)now.Number 11?🥱
the crazy thing for me is that my musical life revolves around rock but I can't handle almost any rock before the 1970s, because the production style and thin tinny drum sounds just bother me so much.
I had no idea about this, thanks. Where can i learn more? @@Spo-Dee-O-Dee
I am a professional musician....@@Spo-Dee-O-Dee
"The Warning"; a true rock band [power trio] consisting of three 20-something Mexican sisters from Monterrey, MX, who sing in English [a couple of exceptions]. Their style is generally 70's-80's hard rock, that they write themselves. Its truly amazing seeing one of their live shows in the USA, lots of people in the crowd who clearly saw the GOATS of the past, and who had given up on ever hearing the music they love from a contemporary group. After 3 albums and an EP, of all original music, they simply have no bad songs. BTW, they had their "viral moment" as 10 year old kids, covering "Enter Sandman", but have DEFINITELY grown up into their talent.
In a digital musical world where you can do anything, nothing means anything anymore.
I thought I understood something about this subject, but it seems I'd actually only just scratched the surface, and was blown away by your triumphantly thorough and precise post-mortem of Rock. I feel privileged to have heard it, yet find I'm a little depressed now, too. Ten deep stabs is too much for any art form to take!
A concise and pretty brilliant history of rock 'n' roll
ginger baker said, we started heavy metal basically, and that's when it went bad....
Someone asked Roger Daltrey why old music was better and he said that when he was young, music was all that young people had, Now they have computers. I would also point out that a lot of great music was created by bands, but they went away because artists don't want to split the money. Finally, rock became about everything except rock. Look at who is in the rock hall of fame.
yes, fewer distractions then, the tv use to sign off at 1 pm or so@@teastrainer3604
I'm alive; Rock's alive
I'm from 96, still can't let go of rock music (alt-rock) and i'm still composing rock music. I made 22 tracks, mostly alternative rock. it's on spotify etc
Rock died because youth rebellion died.
Kids today don't even want to learn how to drive. They have no interest in rebellion and freedom - quite the opposite.
They want rigid uniformity. They want safe spaces. They don't want to rock.
Heavy metal is the same - except it just became a bunch of weird occult themes and mindless screaming. It's horrible.
Blame it on the cell phone, I guess
Today's modern smart-phone is the limit of youth ambition. @@Music--ng8cd
You're not even allowed to be rebellious anymore. Try it. You will get banned from venues, from social media, If you rebel hard enough, you will get your bank account revoked. You can't do it. I want to make music so bad, but I want it to mean something and that is genuinely illegal now
Not driving is probably one of the smartest things kids could do. And taking public transportation is an FU to fossil fuel industry. Acts of rebellion change with time. Ah yes, the good ol'days when kids died young in car crashes and cars killed the climate. This will get an "ok Boomer/Gen X'er" response.😂😂😂
Just stop oil seem to have young activists
I'm 54. Hardly play my large cd collection anymore. Prefer to play hi quality streaming (in the car especially and at work, home) but I still play my vinyl at home when time allows and is my preferred medium for new music purchases.
Please stop paying for these terrible streaming services that screw over the artists.
@@matturner6890 The artists arent losing out from what I can and can't afford when it comes to me buying physical copies. I would have bought what I would normally buy in terms of physical sales due to financial restraints. OK I pay a subscripton yearly that you could say could have gone to a few more physical purchases but Streaming can influence my limited purchasing power where I might buy something I would never have heard if it wasn't for the streaming platform. I will agree that what the artist gets per stream is woeful and something needs to happen there but the platforms also help make artists visible to potential purchasers who may also take in a live gig of that band, buy a t shirt etc?
The industry did this to itself really during Napster and should have moved into the streaming market...but then the artist was generally ripped off by the industry anyway prior to illegal downloads. Artists do now have the freedom of starting up a cottage industry for themselves and keeping all their rights. Maybe use the streaming sites to showcase a couple of songs and then sell full material from their own websites or bandcamp..which is what they do. The whole industry has changed and artists just have to move with the times and come up with new ideas to make a living out of it. Of course the other problem is getting heard in a sea of musicians who can release very professional recordings froma home studio set up. Will I stop using streaming sites because you say I should? Not likely, the geni is out of the bottle I'm afraid.
As one of those old guys you mentioned, around the mid-80s I realized that rock appeared to be dead. All of the other genres appeared to have nudged it off to the side as younger people seemed to be content with what I called "crap". Fast forward to today and I'm finally listening for the first time to some of the bands who were very popular in the 80s/90s/00s. I'm finding that some of them had some worthwhile songs, so shame on me for putting a blanket over all of them and walking away. Suffice it to say that I never downloaded anything that I didn't pay for. What really brought me back was, as crazy as it sounds--covid. Being stuck at home I discovered UA-cam. I discovered people there doing reactions to music they'd never heard of by taking requests. I discovered bands like The Warning, who got discovered ten years ago doing a cover of Metallica's Enter Sandman as kids in their basement. They're getting ready to release their fourth album and the youngest just turned 19. It's good quality hard rock with influences from the same time period that I poo-pooed. So, I admit that I was wrong, and that the nails may be resting on the lid of rock's coffin, but they have yet to be driven in.
Check out a 2023 album called "Wings" by a band called "Rian".
Wayne Kramer last week. one guy who wouldn't anytime soon, turn his back on rock bands. and Andy is here to remind me that it's not so much the music of rock only, it's the people who are still serious about making music in a rock band, that are dying. long live Wayne Kramer. (in what he created).
Wayne and the MC5 were the living personification of rock and roll for me. Forever grateful for all the artists that did it right inspite of the mainstream public and industry trying to suppress it
Could'nt care less what that idiot Communist has to say.
I am 74 years old, listened to prog and fusion all my adult life. When my 18 year ol grandson with girlfriend here listening to music by Pink Floyd, tell me have never heard of them, my inner being groans in shock and despair.😢
I feel the same way. The sad thing is that most of the music we knew and loved will be lost to time.
Did you ask them to hang around awhile and just listen to Dark Side of the Moon? If they heard some they may have gotten curious and even liked it. My 14 year old granddaughter heard Bohemian Rhapsody a little over a year ago and fell in love. She spend the rest of the day listening to it over and over until she could sing along. and is now a fan of Queen
I'm sure some of the younger generation are interested. But in truth I don't see it myself. Trying to entice my music tastes to most grown ups is usually met with derision.@@DianeLake-sw3ym
Just like your parents couldn't understand why you weren't appreciating Bing Crosby etc...
@@DianeLake-sw3ymI feel sorry for her. Did your parents turn you on to Sinatra?
Jesus Christ. I thought I was depressed *before* I watched this but I had no idea how far I could sink. This video should have a content warning.
😆
Led Zeppelin was rarely played on USA radio when they were around as a band. And when they finally started to play LZ all they played was Stairway To Heaven.
Well after they peaked, they got a lot of airplay on the hard rock / cock rock stations.
They were on FM radio.
IDK, when I started listening to rock music in California in the late 1970s they were already rock God status. Not sure how it was in the early 70s. Maybe like you said, not much attention.
Telecommunications Act of 1996 was another death blow to mainstream music. Gotta fight uphill.
Right
I'm not aware of that. Can you expand a bit on it and how it damaged music?
Laura Near-o. I learn alot from you. Love your channel. I saw Led Zeppelin in Summer 1969 at a multi-band concert. They were the last band and, after four songs, the promoter shut down the concert to avoid Union overtime pay. The audience grumbled but no riot. (The other bands were Jethro Tull, Johnny Winter and Buddy Guy)
"American Idol" aka Simon Cowell and all his associated spin-offs completely shifted the focus back to only vocals. I foresaw that coming during Season 1 when Kelly Clarkson was battling Justin Guarini for supremacy.
I would argue that The Beatles killed the singer/performer which dominated popular music before them
Hello Andy. My first comment on your channel that I recently discovered. I mainly agree with you in this video. I'm 55 and explored several genres of music until the first half of the 90's time when I realized that rock music was nearly dead. Now I only listen to music from the 70's, the genres you talk about here, prog, jazz, fusion even if my first loves of music during my teens are in the eighties. A special bravo for your drumming in IQ ! (sorry for my french english)
Just watched a Rick Beato video,Rock and country music are the two music genres that have got bigger over the last couple of years.
Yes, I saw that two...I wonder what they classing as rock?
Beato also recently called Billie Eilish the heir to the legacy of Kurt Cobain.
His videos are often interesting, but he panders a lot, and he isn’t always honest.
@@mymangodfreyBeato just caters to conservative rock fans
Some of it died for me when a couple of decades back I saw an interview with four quite young boys who were proudly talking about how they loved rock and had started a rock band. After a while they got up to perform, and all four of them grabbed a microphone and started singing to a backing track. Oh, a boyband, right on.
I knew that rock was in trouble when I listen to Larger than Life by The Backstreet Boys and then It's My Life by Bon Jovi back to back. I kept trying to tell myself it was Studio interference
Well done, you've presented a lot of hard truths, Andy.
Thank you kindly
Great video Andy. One thing you didn’t discuss was generational change. The drift in preference in music. I was born in 1954, I recall during the 60s and 70s having no interest in the music my parents and grandparents were interested in. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I really loved the music of Al Jolson, George Cohan, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald. But it was always old music, music of a bygone era. But consider 50 years back from 1966 (when I was 12) took me back to 1916. 50 years back from now takes me back to 1974, so larger gap from now to 1966 than from 1966 to 1916.
Another point, maybe this only relates to Australia, during the 1980s all these environmental laws. Health and Safety laws that reduced the number of people you could cram into a pub for a gig and the need to create fire exits that are expensive to retro fit. Noise abatement laws that allowed those who lived near pubs to close down the venues due to noise and behaviour of patrons during and after gigs. Introduction of random breath tests for alcohol for car drivers so the consumption of alcohol dropped at pub gigs. And finally, the introduction of legislation that gave poker machines ( slot machines) licences to pubs. All that killed the Australian Pub rock scene here in Australia.
Finally, there are still great bands performing interesting music in the Rock genre but they fail to get airplay except on niche stations. Here in Australia, some community radio stations and the ABC ‘youth stations’ Double J, Triple J and Unearthed.
Great list Andy but the corpse was rotting well before this. The first nail was the death of '60s optimism and the hippy dream after Altamont; the Manson murders; Vietnam; political assassinations; Nixon; the death of Jimi, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin etc. The Woodstock festival lost a ton of money but the movie made the organisers millionaires. The corporations soon realised the potential and made their move. Another nail was the glam rock fashion of the early '70s. This was followed by AOR and 'yacht rock' a few years later. Look at any edition of TOTP from 1976 and you'll see what I mean. There were also two albums that killed rock through mega commercial sales: Hotel California, and Rumours. There was also a movie called Star Wars that changed youth culture. So it was over before its idiot bastard son, punk came along and danced all over its grave. RIP.
I always defend Fleetwood Mac when they are lumped in with the Eagles. Their music was not limp. There so much more musicianship going on. I even liked Stevie Nicks in that context.
@@Birdlives247 True - they were far from limp when they were Peter Green's band. :) But they became the very definition of limp in respect to music without him. Smoothed and sanitised to ensure they didn't excite the masses to any action other than opening their wallets.
Wonderful performers , great writing and very clever songs. There is a place for that obviously but it's classic "dad" rock. (And that is not rock!)
That was entirely fascinating.
SCHOOL DAYS!!! Probably my favourite jazz-rock album. Another fascinating and funny video, cheers!
It is true that Death is a theme that kind of runs through this channel, and it is good to acknowledge Him. I can and do listen to contemporary, shadowless k-pop girl groups for days on end, hoping He'll go away, but so far it hasn't worked. Nowhere to run.
Yes I agree with your summary of what killed Rock, one other factor was Punk Rock and the intense dislike of old aging hippies playing in huge arenas, this was the beginning of the end, oddly enough one band produced what many consider to be the best Punk Rock song without all the hype of the Pistols
and that was 'New Rose' by the Damned, this short lived band, considered to be Punk
were technically reflective of Rock, they could actually play, without resorting to three chords
The success of Punk came from a new generation with different values who invented a new fashion
and outlook on life alien to Emerson Lake and Palmer, Yes and a generation of others, that was the' first nail in the coffin' for Rock
Rock and Roll is not at all dead, it just packed up and moved to Japan where incredibly gifted musicians there have picked up the mantle of Rock in all its glory. They produce new amazing songs with the heart and soul of Rock's true forebearers. There are many great bands in Japan, but my favorite is the powerful five member, all female group called Band-maid. Check out their instrumental MV "From Now On" to see their impressive musical chops or see their incredible official live video "Domination" to see how a real Rock band can still blow away an audience. There are many others, of course, but if you want genuine hard Rock, one has to look outside of the dull American soundscape to the great artists playing abroad. Peace.
I wish I could give you more than one thumbs up. Rock is very much alive and well. It just moved to Japan, is female and sometimes appears in maid outfits!
It went to Japan.. ok.. I am.not going there anytime soon.
@@JustKJ109 There are plenty of accessible music videos from Japan to view in the comfort of one's living room, no international travel required.
Band-Maid is one the best guitar-based bands you can find. They strike that perfect balance between chaos and perfection; the sweet spot of artistic creation as Andy has described. They draw from most all rock genres, are excellent musicians, and great performers. The songwriting is genius. Plus they have a positive vibe and bring lots of happiness. They are a band that can bring us all together, if anyone can. They make me feel like I am in the 1970's again with that explosive musical creativity.
@@roybjensen well you made a good commercial for them cause I just listened to them because of your praise..
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is killing Rock and Roll.
It is smothering and crushing the heart and soul of rock and roll.
The RRHOF celebrates the very things rock and roll rebels against.
You are giving way too much importance to the rnrhof. It is easily ignored. They are not the arbiters of music.
Right. As soon as the vampires notice the numbers ticking up on a band they do derivatives or straight copies which tends to overshadow the original form. This isn't exactly news.
If you watched MTV in 1989 and then tuned again in 1994, this would be overwhelmingly obvious.... They switched from third rate 80's style hard rock bands (who admittedly had some talent) to third rate 90's style hard rock bands (where riffs and melodies were heavily dumbed down and solos were almost non existent).
Rock might be long dead, but the segment of the music gear industry marketing guitars and gadgets to rock guitarists sure is alive and kicking. Never has there been so many choices in guitar gear, at all price points, and targeted at all eras and styles of rock music. I guess I find this sort of ironic.
It's a byproduct of gear no longer being a hot property. In the 1980s gear cost an arm and a leg.
On the Duke tour, at the beginning of Duchess, Phil Collins was actually "playing" the drum machine by adjusting the settings. It was interesting.
They chased the money !
Saw the Who in about 1979 in London ( "Who are you" tour I think). Kenny Jones on drums replacing the recently deceased Keith Moon (aged 32). Said to my fellow 16 year old mate at the end of a pretty dull gig "wish we'd seen them when they were young and good".
I was lucky enough to have seen The WHO when KEITH MOON was still alive at the Seattle Center Coliseum.. I was a teenager… they kicked ass.. as powerful as the LIVE AT LEEDS album… Best live recording of any band ever made in my opinion… 😊
not forgetting tasteless music executives GREED! 🕉🥷
The MTV phenomenon is very pertinent indeed. In the mid-70's in Australia, the ABC (public TV and radio network) introduced an hour long TV Pop/Rock program called 'Countdown'. It replaced a 15 minute daily Rock program called 'GTK'. Whereas GTK was counter-cultural, Countdown was very mainstream. I first saw Gabriel-era Genesis on GTK as a child. Countdown lasted from late 1974 to 1987. It was like MTV in that it broadcast very commercial music and rarely gave anything radical a look in. It also portrayed music in a cutesy, formulaic fashion. As a kid, I hated how "square" this show was but had no televisual alternative.
MTV in Europe at least allowed for a great deal of unusual and half experimental/niche music that was way outside of the FM Radio charts format. I remember watching a gig with Radiohead live on MTV around 1992, and videos with West German and French underground bands in the mid-eighties.
Rock Arena, Beat Box, Big Gig? There was great music programming on Australian television if you bothered to watch.
There is a band called The Warning who are going a long way in reviving rock music.
i was wondering how long i would have to wait to see A The Warning post in here long live DPA
@@drop_bear2308 I'm surprised I was first!
Rock was always popular because it captured the youth culture. A bunch of boomer men touting the Warning isnt going to do much in making them the biggest band in the world.
@@Chaz4543 Hey HEY now!!!! Some of us are Gen X ;)
@@mykemech Im Gen Z too and by boomers I mean 40s and up. Anyone whos old gets called a boomer. If you wanna argue 40s is young then we'll be here all day.
As some wag said - Rock isn't dead, it's alive and well, living in Japan wearing stockings and skirt.
Very well researched, KNOWN, and stated. Thank you.
Another reason (10) for me to browse the thrift stores scrounging out old albums. Give me the great vinyl of yesterday, scratches and all.
I abandoned contenporary music in the 80's, now in my 60's, I swerved back into it, now lovin it again.. Yes, screamin' and growling can be a racket on first listen, but give it a chance to get under yr skin. Some fine introspective lyrics/songwriting/stage presence. When its good its F amazing. The energy is there... JINJER, Slaughter to prevail, Spiritbox. Also Rammstein, S.O.A.D, Tool etc etc, just some that passed me by while my old head was in the sand...Brummie far away Btw..
As long as there's some kid with weird hair, banging away on a beat-up guitar with his friends, rock will continue.
Author/rock critic Steven Hyden covered this topic extensively in his book "Twilight of the Gods", which I recommend. But the bottom line is this: public taste is what it is and you can't expect the general public to adore the classic rock aesthetic forever.
THIS. Expecting rock to remain popular is silly. Is rock special compared to other genres?
Fascinating, Andy - you've really got me thinking with all this...
☝️😎
John Bonham as Ozymandias. I love it.
What a fantastic video have a wonderful day Andrew also rock and roll won't die to be honest ❤❤❤❤❤❤😊😊😊😊😊😊
I was excited for this as a sequel to the live aid video. Well put together
Women inherently like dancing, men not so much. Also, club owners realized that it is much cheaper t play records than book a band
I was growing up in Slovakia in the 90s and I remember that CDs cost the equivalent of 25-30 dollars a piece which none of us could remotely afford so of course we were all pirating like crazy. The whole music scene was this crazy bootleg/smuggling operation where anyone with a CD burner was a king. I remember at one point the Pearl Jam Unplugged record turned up in my town but it only had the first four songs for some reason... It took me and my friends literally years to get the full thing. Oh, the good old times.
What's your favorite Henry Cow album?
I love them all but I think my least favorite is Unrest. I know everyone gets excited about side two of that album, but I lived with free jazz and free improv for about five years before that album appeared, so it didn't do that much for me. But HC was impressive. I preferred John Greaves to Georgie Born on bass, just because I like busy bass players, but Georgie was very good.
Enjoying your broad perspective sir. Broader than I had expected tbh. Have subscribed and liked. Good work
"Come back baby, Rock 'n Roll never forgets..." - Bob Seger. Great program!
By the late 70s I had not listened to commercial radio for years. I found myself in a band and the musicians began picking songs I never heard of….in a few short months, I found myself in a disco band. Oh my, what I endured…..ugly matching clothes, haircuts, dance lessons!!!
I remember walking into a San Francisco club and saw two people with only keyboards. A few years later, fed up with ‘musicians’ I entered into the world of MIDI. Now I had total control of what I played, when I played and making more money than a whole band.
I’ve been asked to join many bands…….still working solo!
Most people our age have realized that for years .There hasn't been much worth listening to for decades now.
Yep, I don't even have the desire to search anymore
10 years back my young workmates did not know the Rolling Stones. I heard a Chinese born and raised girl humming Red River Valley, but her dad was a pianist. She knew every note of the tune.
god did i hate disco but compared to hiphop rap it's like a breath of fresh air
What's your issue with hip hop?
i'd rather not discuss it
@@hansolo9585
@@hansolo9585 Well, if Richie is thinking like Keith Richards, here's the issue: "“Rap: so many words, so little said. What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many TONE-DEAF people out there,” he said. “All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it, and they’re happy. There’s an enormous market for people who can’t tell one note from another.”
I would add, all they need is one repeating note (usually sampled from real musicians) and somebody yelling over it, and they're happy.
If you ask musicians, those who actually compose and arrange music, writing the melodies is actually the "heavy lifting" part of the creative process, and most of the lyrics come later. With hip-hop, they often just take (sample) someone else's melody and superimpose lyrics, which tend to be low brow, simplistic, braggadocious, juvenile, profane, misogynistic, and completely lacking a sense of curiosity or originality. Someone once played a rap song for me in Serbo-Croatian, and I just burst out laughing. Despite being unable to understand a single word, it still managed to sound like a million other hip-hop tunes, with the same sequence and cadence over and over.
Totally agree. In the 70s I used to find reggae boring because I thought it was too basic and it all sounded the same.
But when hip hop came along it suddenly made Bob Marley sound like Beethoven! Truly a great tragedy for Black music
and Black culture if hip hop is now the only future "artform" from a people who gave the world Gospel, Blues, and Jazz.
Today, sadly it seems musical talent is no longer required. (Quite apart from glorifying gangsta lifestyle , guns and misogyny).
all u need is a drum machine now and to able to speak@@musicgarryj
You can’t kill rock n roll. It’s here to stay!!
Thanks andy, food for thought.
It's not dead lot of underground rock bands around really good
the take on the drum machine and the 12" dance single is very astute
I used to think that Napster Killed Rock, but it only EXCELERATED its demise. I also think that the PROLIFERATION of TECHNICAL GUITAR SOLOS & GUITAR PLAYING took rock n roll into the "YAWN ERA". And "been there done that," where by the year 2000 every conceivable chord progression had been played forward & backward. And YES....DEATH!!!!!
Napster killed it because the major labels didnt want to sign and invest lots of money into lots of rock bands anymore after people were getting the music the free. How many huge hard rock and metal bands has their been post Napster ? Not a lot. The major labels still run the music industry.
my man i feel incredibly validated in this moment. i'm 55 and a curmudgeon i'll be the first to admit it. i've been saying since at least the early 90's that music videos were the beginning of the end fer rock and all its various sub genres. why? because in the 50's, 60's and 70's yer music TRULY HAD TO STAND ON ITS OWN. you could make a clip like "strawberry fields forever" or whatnot (such as the artiste playing the song live or pretending to play the song live) and it mite be on tv once and nobody would see it again until years later in reruns. it was not on several times a week fer weeks. therefore, all the emotion and dopamine had to be created by the music alone. that's why even the crassly mersh stuff back then was great (bands like LOOKING GLASS in the states or MUD in the u.k.). once videos become a thang and then mandatory yer music could be completely mediocre or even downright shit but you can make a cool mini movie to go with it and that will sell yer units for you. you just handed mediocre artists the greatest crutch in history! not only that but suddenly the movie/television industry and the music industry are no longer entirely separate entities as they once were and so now they're joined at the hip and pretty soon modeling and all sorts of other phony, shallow garbage industries are invited to the party and a suffering art form is only further diluted away from its purest essence. in an era when visual is more important than audio somebody like JIM CROCE couldn't get arrested these days.
i know i'm generalizing and oversimplifying like a motherfucker here but in the end me thinks i'm correct. btw, you talk like the guys in BLACK SABBATH.
The death of rock is built on the incessant doodling of rock guitarists, and poor songwriting.
Van Halen was a great guitarist, but an average writing. He is where it all went wrong.
Hendrix allied his virtuosity to the song. He didn't stop halfway thru a song, play a solo, and then go back to the crud! It was all one.
We are currently surrounded by all these technically great guitarists, but the songs are poor, poor, poor.
You hit the nail on the head! Thank you!
I think that rock became predictable and gave up being fun and about getting laid
Damiano David rock frontman from Måneskin examines that rock is not dead it is recycled. They play with rock attitude and pop creativity. They are a wonderfully talented very young group from Italy. Anyone who has seen them live can’t dispute that they are rock. They have talent, audacity, energy, fashion, looks and they keep experimenting.
Måneskin sucks, they are literally hated in their own country
I admire your „ professorship“( no irony intended).You might not want to disclose it, but do you lecture freely without reading? Great skill you have. As for digital drumming: I did this some time ago and was amazed at the inaccuracies that could be heard and the printed score showed. It went as far as 100 th of a second. Couldn’t ´ t believe it.
Grunge is the only thing that harmed rock… suddenly it was all depressing doom and gloom. But rock is back big time.
As long as there is a guitar with double humbuckers hiding in a closet and an old dusty tube amp in somebody's attic, rock cannot die.
That sounds like a coffin.
Still with the needless tube amp worship 🤮 heavy, useless, fickle things unless you're playing Wembley Stadium. Rock will not live if no one innovates and embraces new tech.
This was a lecture that should be repeated at university.
"Playing to a few hundred people in the corner", i.e. Oxbow.
Yay, rock is dead. Long live Polka! The international music of the world.
I’ve once again found your perspective very interesting.
All fantastic points of what is happening beneath the surface.
I do think much of Rock, Classic rock and especially Progressive Rock will survive for centuries. Yes, I said centuries. We’re already 50 years or mor out from some historic music and I believe in 50 years it’ll still be listened to. Much like Mozart,
Bach, Beethoven etc.
If coffin of rock is more rock than rock coffin, does that mean that lobster of rock is more rock than rock lobster?
Ok, yes, I’m a troll. I’ll see myself out.
Omg, me too! The only time I listen to music anymore is in my car! That's it man! I love my car time!!
The Rock and Roll HOF is a misnomer. I dislike the fact that it is an umbrella for every style of music. It should be called THE MUSIC HALL OF FAME with specific honors for each genre and subgenre. Too many non-rock music acts are getting recognized as great rock and rollers whilst great rock bands are over looked and left out.
Subscribed today. Great channel with some interesting and thought provoking topics.
Cheers from a 55 year old Canadian guitarist.
Big-band and stuff probably dead but trawled UA-cam and found Django and Stephane Grappelli ( with a brilliant Sacha Distell on guitar!), who seem as fresh, timeless and deathless as ever. Film will probably save them and many another from total oblivion. Genius never fails to impress whatever generation you happen to belong. I still love Chaplin, Keaton and co for instance.
...apart from Drum'n'Bass being over thirty years old, yeh...just imagine people at an acid house party asking for Rock around the Clock by Bill Haley And the Comets because that is the relitive timescale, a lot of music gets lost..a lot of bands have never had a big media profile because they never "played the game" in the first place, like festival headliners Ozric Tentacles and Here N Now, Porcupine Tree never 'made it' until they stopped touring. There bands that sell out gigs now that have never released records, some have never had any songs or setlists and inprovise at every gig like The Bays. My personal favorites have been Sicknote, Culture Shock and NFA... there is a new underground...
What an amazing video.
Thank you!
I’m happy music was absolutely central to all of my friends growing up.
Your saying was
. Testifies rock is dead. .
Good vid. I completely agree.
Great video as usual Andy! 42:11 My first copy of Van Halen Fair Warning was a cassette I recorded off of the radio which I played a thousand times -- the station would play full albums on Sunday nights -- I went to the record store and looked at the vinyl copy to see what the song titles were but they were in a different order from the real track listing and I was quite confused at first
Thank you for giving context and order to all my random thoughts. I feel almost cleansed now you have made sense of it all. 👍🏻